“Who has beguiled you?”
by thebaileydrink
Merry Saturday by Parris
Gal.3:1 – “Who has beguiled you?”
Years ago when I was pre-teen I would spend my days watching Alfred Hitchcock horror movies. I know ‘not good’ and yes it left it’s mark on me. Which brings me to my blog title-“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. This particular one scarred me for life. It’s about “Alien
plant spores have fallen from space and grown into large seed pods, each one capable of reproducing a duplicate replacement copy of each human. As each pod reaches full development, it assimilates the physical characteristics, memories, and personalities of each sleeping person placed near it; these duplicates, however, are devoid of all human emotion. Little by little, a local doctor uncovers this “quiet” invasion and attempts to stop it.” (wikipedia) The movie ends with the pods being delivered by truckloads to various cities.
Like the movie, it seems as if spores from an alien planet have seeped into our air or water supply. I just want to ask my brothers and sisters, “who are you” or “what happened to you”! It seems to feel almost as if a quiet invasion has come, putting people in a zombie-like state void of emotions. Even Paul in the book of Galatians said, “What has happened to you Galatians to be acting so foolishly? You must have been under some evil spell?” Gal. 3:1
Recently I was watching a preacher on YouTube talking about what is not acceptable in their services, in fact his quote was “we will not have any of that holy ghost stuff”. Holy Ghost as in redemption? People crying out like in the book of Acts “what must we do to be saved”, or Paul’s shadow healing thousands on the streets. Let us revisit the streets of London to the coals miners where tears ran down their cheeks and bars closed. People were screaming, tearing pews up and rolling outside. Calling it Holy Ghost stuff is blasphemy. He isn’t stuff but a person. He is a mighty rushing wind, a fire in our belly that when he walks into the room everything changes. I need the Holy Ghost to deal with women terrorized by drugs, demons, dragons, and doom. We all need to be careful that we just don’t sweep the Holy Spirit right out of our churches and our lives. In other words, Christianity is messy, noisy and you cannot contain it. Why would you?
Listen to MacLaren when he says, “You know the old superstition as to the Evil Eye? Certain persons were supposed to have the power, by a look, to work mischief, and by fixing the gaze of their victims, to suck the very life out of them. So Paul asks who the malign sorcerer is who has thus fascinated the fickle Galatians, and is draining their Christian life out of their eyes. Jesus Christ as having been displayed before their eyes. They had seen Him. How did they come to be able to turn away to look at anything else? Jesus Christ crucified has been conspicuously set forth before you, what happened?”